stuff that passes for art

At the end of the Golden Age, the data archivist Orion Pax is not alone in harbouring doubt in Cybertron’s future. Inspired by the revolutionary fervour of the gladiator, Megatronus, Orion seeks him out; and thus begins a relationship that will eventually bring Cybertron to its knees.

 meme reference 

57. Forgotten First Meeting  97. Time Travel  

It took me a surprising amount of time to come up with this, and it may not be what you’re expecting, but I had the idle thought and suddenly it won’t get out of my head, so. xD

Toshinori is sixteen years old when Nana decides he’s ready to take on One For All. He’s not that much older when she’s killed in her battle against All For One, and suddenly the matter of his learning to become a Hero becomes literally life or death. He handles the pressure and the grief well, all things considered, but if he starts taking long walks at night, and happens to run into minor villains while he’s at it, well, at least he’s doing something productive. 

Unfortunately for him, one of said minor villains has a not-so-minor Quirk. He faces off against them in the dark hours of the morning, and the next moment he’s standing in a little alley in broad daylight.

A few hours’ worth of looking around leaves him with two scraps of knowledge: that he knows this town, and that it is somehow wrong. On a hunch, he walks into a little corner shop (metal shutters over the door and windows, just like home) and flicks through a newspaper to find his bearings. The date on the newspaper is four months and thirty-three years into the future.

So Toshi wanders around the town for a day or so, trying to figure out what to do. In that time, he witnesses five minor villain attacks and two that aren’t so minor. There are no children playing in the streets, and the people at bus stops and in shops seem tired and nervous. The only thing that has changed in thirty-three years is the layout of some of the inner-city streets. He watches as a group of Heroes subdue a villain with a gigantification Quirk, and decides he’s not surprised.

That evening, he finds himself wandering in the direction of the apartment block that used to be his home. He watches it for a few hours, recognising no-one, and he’s about to give up for the night and go find a park bench or something to sleep on when a young woman approaches him, the expression on her face torn between wariness and concern. She wears her hair like Nana did, and that makes Toshi’s gut flip from a distance, but as she gets closer her face is rounder and softer than Nana’s was. She’s been watching him with her neighbours, she says; new faces always stick out like a sore thumb and they’ve been wondering if he’s been waiting for anyone in particular, or if he needs something, or… she talks like she’s trying to fill up the silence, and when he moves she steps back like she expects to be attacked. 

So Toshi tells her the truth - that he used to live here, but hasn’t for years, but now he hasn’t got anywhere else to go, and he was hoping that the people he used to live with might still be here. He tells her his grandparents’ names, and she goes inside to check with the apartment managers - no, the Yagis moved out nearly twenty years ago, and by that time there was only one of them. And that’s what gets Toshi after everything that’s happened; he breaks down in tears. After a moment, the young woman steps forward and hugs him, very hesitantly.

“My name is Inko Midoriya,” she tells him as he sobs into her shoulder, “and if you’d like, you can stay with me for a few days while you figure out what to do with yourself.”

Ten minutes later, Toshinori finds himself sitting at a dinner table with an enormous spread of food in front of him, while Inko bustles around in the kitchen, fixing up even more. There’s a very excited toddler in a high chair on the other side of the table, with curly hair the same shade of green as Inko’s and very round, freckled cheeks. This is Izuku, Inko tells him, her little boy who wants more than anything to grow up to be a Hero.

“I was training to be a Hero,” Toshinori admits. Izuku’s eyes grow big and round, and he flails his hands and knocks over his sippy cup, which splashes juice all over the table. Toshi hastily wipes the drips away while the kid interrogates him about his Quirk (which Toshi clumsily deflects) and who his favourite Heroes are (he mumbles something about Nana, and adds Torino as an afterthought; Inko has only heard of the latter).

In the morning, Inko takes him to the government social services office, where he shares his story in full, and finds out that he has no living family left. He is assigned a case manager, who marks the missing-persons case for Toshinori Yagi as closed, then asks him if, considering his age (nearly seventeen) and his overall situation, he would rather be assigned to a foster family or simply declared emancipated. “It’s okay if you need to take your time deciding,” she says, and hands him a folder full of housing brochures and job advertisements. “All of this must be quite a shock for you.”

Inko is still in the waiting room when he walks out of the appointment; she’s playing with Izuku, who has found some Hero action figures and is acting out an epic battle against a plush dinosaur toy. She listens as Toshinori retells his story, filling in the gaps he’d skipped over last night, then, as he trails off, unsure how to conclude it, she pulls him down into a fierce hug and tells him that she’ll do whatever she can to help him find his feet in this new time.

So they go home, have dinner, watch one of Izuku’s favourite Hero movies, and in the morning Toshinori starts putting his life back together. He finds a cheap studio apartment in the same complex - ‘moving in’ is a somewhat bittersweet affair consisting mainly of buying some cheap and necessary furniture online with a living costs grant from social services - and, after a few sleepless nights’ worth of soul-searching, goes to visit Yuuei.

The Principal takes him by surprise - instead of the enormous woman with the gargoyle Quirk who had occupied the position during his first five months thirty-three years ago, he meets with a child-sized animal (bear? mouse? he’s not sure what) wearing a suit and walking on two legs. Principal Nedzu listens to his story with interest, then takes Toshinori down to the school’s archives to dig his old entrance exam results out of the back rooms. “Ah,” he says, shuffling through the thin sheaf of papers, “your academic results could be better, but your practical exam and your Hero Course classwork show real talent. I see you studied under Gran Torino.”

“Yeah,” says Toshinori, and swallows. “Do you know how to contact him? I feel like I should… let him know I’m alive, or something.”

“Unfortunately that man is famously reclusive,” says Nedzu, grinning. He’s got flat, blocky teeth, nothing like any animal Toshinori has ever seen. “If it is any consolation, our current crop of teachers are not so cantankerous.”

Toshi laughs, because that does sound like Torino. “Does that mean you’ll let me come back?”

Nedzu looks down at his file again. “I think I would be quite interested to see what a boy like you can make of himself. We are holding the entrance exam for next year’s cohort next month. I realise that this would make you nearly two years older than your classmates, but given your academic scores it would not be seemly to place you in the third year among your agemates. However, as long as you do not score too badly, we would be pleased to see you finish your schooling here at Yuuei.”

So Toshinori goes home that evening, drops in to see Inko and Izuku, as he has been doing every day for the past week, and shares with them the good news. Inko hugs him so tightly he thinks his ribs might crack, then cooks him an absolute feast while he keeps Izuku entertained with stories from his first term at Yuuei, and from his training with Nana. The kid is spellbound. Two days later, Toshinori catches him with two new figures, a black-haired barbie doll with a hastily made cape, and a GI Joe in a white wetsuit. He doesn’t quite recognise either until he hears Izuku call the GI Joe ‘Torino’, and then it’s all he can do to keep from dissolving into tears.

A month later, Toshinori shatters the record score at the entrance exam, and is officially accepted into Yuuei for the second time. He invites Inko and Izuku to the commencement ceremony. They sit where Nana did last time, Izuku cheering and Inko sobbing into a handkerchief the whole way through. He gets a few odd looks when they come up to congratulate him afterward - which isn’t really a new thing; he’s grown a full inch since he arrived in the future and he keeps being mistaken for Inko’s boyfriend - but they’re left alone as Inko grabs him and pulls him down for a hug. 

“I’m so happy for you,” she tells him, sniffling through tears. “You’re going to be an incredible Hero someday, Toshinori.”

————